Daily Yellowstone journal., 1887-06-29
FREAKS OF THE INSANE.
SOME or THE LUolcRouS EXPIRES
SONS or THE pEMENTED.

~~"Ay "" e'~ ~
Nothing Too Absurd to ne Believed BY
. Lanatio-Ingsnuity Of Monomaniaos.
Kxtravagant Fancy.
Some Inmates even deliberately assume
TIE role Of joken. They make horrible
puns, ask conundrums and get of poor
yitticisms. But IL Is their unconscious
comicality TIT makes them most laugh
ab2e: and u effect 10 doubled by the
gravity Of nd and tone with which they
utter their Whimsical conceits, and which
avery lecturer OF the humorous species
must envy them. One day, when the
present writer was attending q lecture on
mental diseases In an asylum, the pro-
f~lusions-i. g., his imagination distorted
everything he saw into something differ
eut. "Where are your" the professor
asked the patient. SIN a menagerie,"
was the answer. "And what are these
beings'" tine professor asked, pointing to
the students. The answer was consistent:
'Iions and tigers and bears" When the
students laughed aloud at this unexpected
geological diagnosis, the patient insisted
that the animals were now '~'roaring."
Frequently patients consider themselves
partially or entirely transformed into ami
mails or superior beings. One woman
mentioned by Kraft Ebing insisted that
her feet had been changed into hoofs and
her head into an ox's head. A young man
became convinced in the course of his dis
ease that he was the devil, SO he refused
to take food in order to starve the fiend.
An Austrian patient insisted that he had
lost his eyes, and wanted to go to London
to get a new pair. Being retained against
his will he refused to eat anything on the
ground that Bismarck had poisoned his
food and that a million gods had warned
him against il.
NOTHING Is o ABSURD.
II often happens, as In dreams, that in
animate objects appear to the patient TO
be alive. A tower opposite an aged luna
tics window was taken by him for the
world soul" One day he saw the tower
move away, and a voice came from it
which cursed him for having destroyed
the world Nothing is too absurd to be
believed by the demented. One patient
having paltreated another, was taken to
task and questioned as 70 his motive. He
finally confessed that the other man
WANTED TO come into my ward to bui.d a
chimney six miles high, and l pushed MIN
down stairs" In one case that was I'M
der my charge, - says DR.. Hammond, .'the
patient, a stationer, doing business in this
city, had the delusion that unknown me
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES acting on him
by electricity, which they sent into his
brain, through the top Of his head, by
powerful batteries which they had In their
lodge rooms. In another q woman $50
conceived that all the iron ratings and
railway tracks had been charged with
electricity in order to injure her."
Great ingenuity is often shown by mono
maniacs in trying to justify their ludicrous
beliefs. DIR. Hammond knew a man who
believed that his right hand was made Of
glass, and who therefore carried il in q
stout case, to prevent its being broken.
When the doctor tried to convince him
that his hand was flesh and blood, and not
glass, he retorted' az once thought just as
you do. Ny brain wa then incapable Of
approaching minute differences as well as
il can now; and, though l confess that my
senses stin convey TO me the idea that my
hand il like other peoples, yet / know
that the conception Ii erroneous, and cor
rect 1t 1t once by my reason. My hand
looks hke hssh and blood, but it's glass
for all that. Nothing is more calculated
to deceive than the senses"
ExUBERANcE OF FANCY.
Among Professor Kraft Ebing's pa
tients was n who felt badly used because
they would not give him a needle and
thread TO sew on his head, which he MAIN
tanned had been severed from his body
with q fine cord by q negro. The same
man considered himself q great magician,
and told Of his adventures in quest OF the
north pole, which he found by going down
into Vesuvius. A woman in the same
hospital, previous TO her admission, had
purchased a half finished umbrella, say
ing that she wal going to cline il with the
new religion which reminds one of the
late Emil Scarla, Of Vienna, the famous
basso, who, a short time before his malady
was discovered, went to a tailor and
ordered a fur overcoat for summer use,
adding that it must be lined with electric
light
With sun, moon and stars, lunatics are
On very familiar terms. One patient heard
u noise which she maintained was caused
by the rolling about of the real terrestrial
globe under her bed. Another declared
that she fell from the noon twenty-four
years ago. There she loved the red king
II France, who was shot on the moon.
The director OF the asylum lived opposite
her on the moon. But the most extraordi-
nary exuberance Of fancy was shown by
a deniented officer who considered himself
the ruler Of the world. He also
claimed TO be the greatest opera singer
in the world, and said he had travelled
around the earth with ladies I'm a
carriage drawn by 500 horses whose sta
ties were made Of diamonds. He was
willing to share the earth with another
patient after dividing 1t up at the equator.
Then be intended to divide mp heaven sim
ilarly, and take a drive in the lava Of We
suyius inasmuch as he was f%ireproof. He
Intended TO erect a statue a thousand mill
ion yards in height, made OF pure dia-
monds. He amused himself by shooting
down stars from the armament, and then
he was going TO make new planets by con-
densing gases and inclosing them in a
crust. He was always arranging for tele-
graphic and other communication with
the moon and the stars, and was exceed
ingly anxious to see the pretty girls who
would come down to us from Venus and
Juno.
That doctors, like shoemakers, should
stick TO their last was the opinion con-
yeyed 10 DIR. Hammond by one of his pa
fients. Before he left he began TO speak
in q staccato way: "I-thnk-I-shall-
no-to-the theatre - to-night-to-see
-Booth-in-Hamlet." The doctor asked
him why he spoke In that manner. He
replied. "Because-I-choose-to-do-
m-I--choose - 10 -dO-and-that-is-